As a wannabe writer and long term teacher of English, of course I am interested in language. I have always been interested in history, since elementary school. And, of course, science is fascinating. Watching old episodes of DS9 at the moment. Of course, that’s science fiction, but fans of science fiction are almost invariably fans of science fact as well.
So, when the science of linguistics creates revelations about the past, I perk right up. Which brings us to the news that the Vojnich manuscript has been decoded. Of course, this will be disputed and debated and it may be a while before it’s confirmed or disproved, but the decoder seems to make a credible case. He claims that it’s a proto-romance language, i.e. the descendant of Latin which was the precursor to French, Spanish, Italian and a few other, less widely spoken languages.
Which is really interesting, since nobody knew such a language existed. I suppose, on the other hand, that is cause for skepticism. Still, if the whole thing holds together, if words and phrases repeat and make sense, then the English academic who did this translation has discovered a language which was lost to history, and that’s an amazing thing.
Also, it would blow my pet theory out of the water, which is that some illiterate person, who had seen letters but didn’t understand them, was just scrawling shit in a notebook.
So, I will be following this story with great interest. Let the truth be known, let the chips fall where they may.